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Given certain events in recent years, Jim Bohland is worried about the fate of American democracy.

The professor emeritus at Virginia Tech founding director of its School of Public and International Affairs is focused on Novembers election and the unprecedented upheaval that followed the disputed presidential contest of 2020.

Hes gravely concerned the Jan. 6 insurrection and all the political scheming that preceded it were merely a warm-up for the mayhem that could occur after a Joe Biden-Donald Trump electoral rematch later this year.

Virginia Tech Professor Emeritus James R. Bohland is organizing a covocation on defending democracy Thursday afternoon at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Blacksburg.

We werent prepared then, Bohland told me in a Zoom interview with some others Thursday. I think we waited too long in 2020.

Bohland contacted me last week after the second of two columns about a little book by Yale history Professor Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

Bohland suggested some additional reads. (A shortened list is attached to this column.)

He also dropped news about an event Thursday in Blacksburg. It hews to many concerns Snyder outlines in On Tyranny. The focus is preparing now to support democracy, whatever happens at the end of this year.

Bohland, who began at Tech in 1980 and is now retired, is still teaching courses through the universitys Lifelong Learning Institute. He recently wrapped up a four-week seminar that garnered about 50 students. The title was: Threats to Democracy Populism and Authoritarianism.

The event Thursday at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Blacksburg is kind of a next step. Its title is Defending Democracy: Convocation & Empowering Grassroots Action.

Its open to the public and begins at 1 p.m. at the church, 1301 Gladewood Drive in Blacksburg. Bohland and his co-organizers are hoping for a big turnout, with people from other churches, civic organizations, institutions, governments and any interested individuals.

Three books about defending democracy recommended by Virginia Tech Professor James R. Bohland. Through the university's Lifelong Learning Institute, he recently taught a four-week course:Threats to Democracy - Populism and Authoritarianism.

The assault on democracy in the United States by a political faction embracing authoritarianism necessitates urgent action to safeguard democratic principles, the invitation-flyer states.

We are inviting all concerned organizations and individuals to collaborate in devising strategies to fortify and extend our democratic ideals.

Co-organizer Bob Stimson, a retired public schoolteacher and principal, said Thursdays meeting is a logical follow-up to the Lifelong Learning Institute course Bohland just concluded.

My view is, a lot of people dont understand that democracy is threatened, and a lot of other people dont care that democracy is being threatened, Stimson said. The people that dont understand dont necessarily support the undermining of democracy. They just need to be educated on what the future might be.

Our goal is to widen the circle, get a lot of people involved . . . to engage the community, politicians, people, and churches, in defending democracy, Stimson said.

We want to leave that meeting with a plan, he added. We want to be able to go out and do something, not just meet and say, Isnt this bad?

Also involved in organizing Defending Democracy are Sara Dalton, a retired social worker, and the Rev. Pam Philips, pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Blacksburg.

Every mature democracy possesses anti-democratic elements, Bohland told me.

Basically, a little under roughly 30% of the populace has authoritarian tendencies, Bohland said, citing The Authoritarian Dynamic, by political scientist Karen Stenner. Democracies always have that kind of latent tendency.

President Joe Biden says the threat to democracy has to be defended. He says you can't bury the truth about January 6. He speaks during the State of the Union address.

Though current anti-democratic pressures originate from Trump and other so-called conservatives, authoritarianism can also spring from the left. Its mirror image is populism. As examples, Bohland cited American politicians Huey Long, a governor and senator from Louisiana, and William Jennings Bryan, a congressman from Nebraska.

Both led left-populist mass movements and waged and lost campaigns for the White House. (Long was assassinated; Jennings ran twice as a Democrat and once for the Populist Party and lost each time.)

The strategy employed by both sides is divide and conquer, Bohland said. On the left, populists tend to see the world as a struggle between the rich and poor. On the right, authoritarians often frame it as a battle to preserve national culture from unchecked immigration.

Either way is us against them, he said.

That tactic isnt new; it dates at least to the Russian Revolution and probably before. From either side, the object is division.

Both push an Im right youre wrong kind of argument, Bohland said. Weve taken a kind of flamethrower approach to this thing, and that hurts unity. The goal of each side is to exploit the masses and take down democracy.

Objectives of the convocation include collaborative networking; supporting and safeguarding voting rights; advocating for elected officials committed to democratic governance; and empowering citizens to articulate democratic values.

The Jan. 6 insurrection was a wake-up call, said Dalton, a team leader for voting rights and reproductive freedom at the Blacksburg Unitarian church.

Im hoping well find people in the community who are interested in defending democracy and come up with actions we can take, she said. Were not going in with a set idea, this is what people should do. Were more interested in finding out what people are thinking in the community, and what theyd like to do.

Philips, whos led the Unitarian congregation since 2017, told me shes heard from pastoring peers whove related theyre reluctant to sermonize about supporting democracy.

Some of them feel like they cant speak from the pulpit about their concerns, she said. Part of it is, its just too political. They get a lot of grief from people in the pews for speaking out.

Philips told me that recently, shes been looking back on history when people didnt say something when they could or should have. Some of the parallel to 20th century Europe are hard to ignore.

During the rise of Nazism in Germany, some of the churches that did speak out were shut down. There were churches that aided and abetted when they should have spoken out about what was happening, she said.

But: If we dont address whats going on in the world on Sunday morning, were kind of burying our heads in the sand, Philips added.

Many good reasons to attend Thursday afternoons convocation in Blacksburg, if you can.

Former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone, who was at the Capitol on January 6, is is interviewed by Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams.

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'The January 6 insurrection was a wake-up call' - Roanoke Times

Youre reading an excerpt from the Todays WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest free, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.

Three days of voting, staggered across 11 time zones and a vast stretch of the Earth, could only lead to one outcome: An emphatic reelection victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was always clear that the Kremlin would exult in the landslide mandate accorded to Putin, who contested the vote against a handful of ciphers allowed to be presidential candidates. By Sunday evening, election officials announced a preliminary tally of that preordained result, reporting that Putin had won more than 87 percent of the vote, with three-fourths of the vote counted. State figures suggested a greater turnout than the previous presidential vote in 2018.

Even then, exiled watchdog groups reported episodes of ballot-stuffing, voter intimidation at some polling stations and other attempts at manipulation, including the alleged busing of Putin supporters to vote multiple times at different locations. In areas of Ukraine occupied and illegally annexed by Russia, observers recounted how local authorities coerced people to participate in the election at gunpoint.

Election officials were walking around the occupied town of Novomykolaivka, a local official, who has since fled to other areas of Ukraine, told my colleagues, in a brigade accompanied by an armed soldier. He was carrying a weapon, so it was a threat, not verbal, but in fact it was a threat of violence.

Voters in Russia held Noon Against Putin protests outside polling stations on March 17, the final day of the presidential election. (Video: Naomi Schanen/The Washington Post)

Thousands of Russians in big cities attempted to make their displeasure known at both the nature of Putins regime and the ongoing war in Ukraine by going to vote at noon Sunday a symbolic act of solidarity with the late pro-democracy activist Alexei Navalny, who had long called for fairer and freer elections in Russia before dying in captivity. Many spoiled their ballots. Russian authorities clamped down on other forms of dissent and tried to encourage voters to go to the polls ahead of the designated protest time.

I came here today to express my position and do my part to show that there is still a political life in the country and that there are different opinions, a man named Nikolai told my colleagues. Its important to show that people are not alone and that there is still support for this kind of action.

That need to cling to hope is profound and meaningful for anybody struggling under an authoritarian regime. And, on a global scale, the need to locate such hope is becoming more necessary. As already outlined in Todays WorldView, the bumper year of elections worldwide in 2024 comes at a moment of democratic recession, with the health of democracies around the world in notable decline.

A new study this month from the V-Dem Institute, a leading center for the analysis of comparative politics at Swedens University of Gothenburg, laid out some of the worrying macro-indicators. The institutes annual Democracy Report measures a democracy using a multidimensional data set based on a number of factors, including the civil liberties and freedoms afforded to all citizens, and their ability to participate in fair elections.

This years report found 35 countries witnessing a decline in free and fair elections. In 2019, the number was only 16. An election in Putins Russia is a foregone conclusion a regime going through the motions of democracy without any of its actual convictions. But other more genuine democracies are trending in Putins direction: V-Dem found that governments in 24 countries are increasingly encroaching upon the autonomy of election management bodies, undermining integrity in elections and casting doubt over the independence of the commissions that conduct them.

The erosion of election quality is particularly alarming as elections can either reinforce or counteract the autocratization trend, the institute noted. Of over 60 countries holding national elections this year, 31 are worsening on their democracy levels, while only three are improving.

In V-Dems analysis, the greatest source of concern is India, where the ruling Hindu nationalists under Prime Minister Narendra Modi look set to tighten an already outsize grip on power in upcoming elections. Some 42 countries are autocratizing, according to V-Dem, and 71 percent of the worlds population now lives in autocracies up from 48 percent just a decade ago.

These findings dovetail with a gloomy Pew survey published last month. In polls put to respondents in a spread of 24 countries, researchers found that enthusiasm for representative democracy has slipped since 2017, when the organization conducted a similar survey. It found that a median 59 percent respondents were dissatisfied with how their democracy is functioning, and that close to three-quarters of those polled in countries as disparate as Argentina, Germany and Kenya felt that elected officials dont care what they think. More than 40 percent said no political party in their country adequately reflects their views.

The survey found growing interest in alternatives to rule by elected officials, including an embrace of technocracy or even an autocratic strongman. In 13 countries, a quarter or more of those surveyed think a system in which a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts is a good form of government, noted Pew. In four of the eight middle-income nations in the study, at least half of respondents express this view.

Dictatorship or military rule, though, is not popular. And in its open-ended questions to respondents in two dozen countries, Pew found that people want more responsive politicians in power, term limits and liberalizing government forms. Putins Russia is hardly anyones ideal.

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Democracy Report: Wave of democratic backsliding is a global threat - The Washington Post

I owe it to a wonderful teacher of Translation Studies, Prof. DR, for having introduced the class to The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan (1991) by Eric Cheyfitz. I recollect an American student who said that his life changed after reading this book. Perhaps, he is not the only one.

I have read the book more than once and taught it to different groups of students. Its one of those books I almost by default recommend to research students as a model on how to conduct research along with Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985) by James Scott. Cheyfitz writes with a certain kind of passion; its impossible not to see how deeply he feels with the oppressed of the world. He belongs to the category of academics for whom teaching and research is not only about interpreting but also changing the world.

The reason I wanted to respond to this book is because I could see the importance of the concept of disinformation for an analysis of Indian media and politics. Cheyfitz book, although in a distinctly American context, throws light on quite a few things that are of global relevance. The premise is simple: an author might write a book keeping a specific situation in mind. It does not mean that what he or she says will not apply to other places and other situations. The part where Cheyfitz deals with disinformation in relation to the history of the United States needs an entirely different response, which I intend to undertake separately. Here, I am looking at disinformation in the Indian context.

Disinformation as a concept is of tremendous importance. By the time I finished reading the book I found the term for what the ruling party and the media are doing in India: theyre disinforming the masses. Disinformation and information exist side by sideBut whereas information is something we must consciously process through research of one kind or another (reading, listening, observing, and comparing what we gather), Disinformation processes us like a dream in the classic Freudian sense, where the dream is a structure of contradictions in which the dreamer never recognizes the contradictory structure. Information requires dialogue. Disinformation is a mesmerizing monologue, often masquerading as dialogue (22). Thats what Indian politics has gradually been reduced to since its independence from British rule: a mesmerizing monologue. There is nobody listening to the masses. There is nothing that reflects Indian reality except in a vague manner. The movies, the news, television, social media, discussions related to religion, politics, tradition, popular culture all have been reduced to a caricature. The Indian reality is that people are to a great extent poor, unemployed or underemployed, socially and emotionally repressed, along with bone crushing income inequality.

Cheyfitz makes important distinctions between misinformation, ideology and disinformation although sometimes we tend to use them as if they shared the same properties.

Whereas misinformation is merely a mistake in reportage that is typically retracted in the next days news or a distortion of the truth, conscious (spin) or unconscious, for particular ends, such as the Bush administrations fiction of weapons of mass destruction, Disinformation is a deep, historical process of erasing history itself, culminating in a disruption or blockage of critical thinking in which particular fictions, through repeated and widespread use in our major institutions (schools, media, government, and political parties), substitute reflexively for facts. But, and here is the crux of the matter, Disinformation is not ideology. It is, rather, ideologys mirror image. Disinformation appears as ideologys double and like the double is the reverse of ideology. Whereas ideology is a narrative that retains certain ties to reality, Disinformation is rhetoric utterly detached from, while substituting for, reality. That is, ideology bears a relation to reality even as it displaces reality. I am using reality here in its most material sense: who eats; who starves; who has health care; who sickens and dies without it; who is tortured; who for reasons of privilege (a matter of location, whether material or geographical or ideological) escapes torture; who works at a living wage; who cannot find work or works for wages at or below the poverty line; who receives an education that helps propel him or her into or secures them in the materially advantaged classes; who is denied such an education, etc. (23) (my emphasis)

In India we dont see any discussion of real issues on public platforms. Political parties have a single-point agenda: how to divide the masses, how to win elections, how to stay in power after winning elections, how to loot the country. Lying, cheating, deception and broad daylight robbery in the form of corruption are the order of the Indian day. In fact, corruption is so normal that for an Indian its like drinking water to quench thirst. A country where dishonesty is normalized is a country on a suicide mission. The suicide is not for the rich and the powerful. The suicide is for the diminishing middle classes, the expanding ranks of the poor and the powerless. Political parties talk of religion or caste in an abstract, disconnected way; no one talks about the poor and the unemployed as poor and unemployed. By reducing every other equation to religion and caste, they make it impossible for any honest debate on what needs to be done in order to bring the poor out of their misery. Both the ruling BJP and the main opposition the INC have nothing substantial to offer the masses.

Cheyfitz offers an example for disinformation when he says, The war on terror is a prime example of a fiction of Disinformation. The war on terror has no particular object or end; it is everywhere and can be anythingto the extent that misinformation is grounded in Disinformation, as the misinformation of weapons of mass destruction was grounded in the Disinformation of the war on terror, it can remain exceptionally resistant to information (24). When we analyze the information produced as news on a daily basis what we see is the barely disguised blatant use of force: I have the power to crush you and I will because it suits me to do so. Thats the message that comes out loud and clear. On one fundamental issue the political parties are in complete agreement; whatever be our differences, keep the masses backward and let them be without means to challenge the government except through elections. Rhetoric and reality have no connection to one another.

In the early 1980s I remember as a boy waiting for a bus one late night. No bus turned up for more than a couple of hours. Eventually I walked home. Those days the bus was the cheapest form of public transport. I remember telling myself that this situation should not continue and people should have better means of life. Maybe there are other means of transport now and the roads are slightly better. That does not change the fact that we are not on the path to change. There is no trace of real transformation except in a superficial sense. Everyone with a professional degree has one aim in mind: how fast to get out of this country. I blame them and I dont blame them. With the kind of income inequality that we see in India it is impossible for any normal person or family to have a life of basic dignity. Dignity comes from material independence. When that is absent people become insecure and treacherous, the insecurity justifying the treachery.

The British MP George Galloway, following his recent victory at Rochdale, said that, Keir Starmer (Labor) and Rishi Sunak (conservative) are two cheeks of the same backside. This is true of the Republicans and the Democrats in the United States and the ruling party and the opposition in India; both represent the same backside; both speak in a language that has no connection with material reality. They are not addressing the basic issues: the almost unbridgeable chasm between the ones who have and the ones who do not, the reinforcement of the status quo inversely proportional to the disempowerment of the masses, pollution that defies the imagination, absence of decent healthcare, lack of security for children and the old, especially from socially weak backgrounds and lack of a decent meal for everyone living in this country. Unfortunately, these things are outside of the nations imagination (36), which is also capitalisms imagination (14) or the neoliberal imagination. Why is it that an average Indian does not think that he or she deserves better? Why do we put up with corrupt politicians who cheat and oppress people? Why do we bear with a police that does not serve common people? Why do we have to endure backwardness as if it is our karmic destiny? Why is the corporate lobby so powerful that they control the pulse of the nation? Disinformation makes it possible for this to happen. As Cheyfitz observes in the American context:

Disinformation, then, is the dead end of ideology. It is the place where ideology no longer serves as a unifying national force, but reality does not intrude or only intrudes in fragments like pieces of a puzzle the polity cannot solvevirtually every U.S. citizen learns in school, from the mass media, and the two major political parties (or the one corporate party if you prefer), we live in a classless society where individual effort (not historical access to wealth tied to race, gender, and class) is the sole engine of success. Thus disinformed, we are taught implicitly to blame ourselves individually if we fail to succeed. Critical perspectives on the violent and unequal ways wealth has been distributed historically in the U.S. (beginning with the Constitution itself, Native American genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, the subversion of the union movement beginning in the 1980s, globalization, etc.) are substantially erased from mainstream public discourse as ongoing issues and thus from public policy decisions that might otherwise focus on the central issue of economic inequality substantially rather than rhetorically. (39-40)

The preamble of the Indian constitution begins rhetorically with the promise of a socialist republic (thats the only time that the word socialist is used in the constitution); there is no mention of class that is at the heart of justice, equality and liberty. Freedom of expression is freedom from repression; but repression is about economic inequality. You cannot prioritize political and social equality and put economic equality on the back burner. If people have to be politically and socially equal, they must also be economically equal. The writers of the Indian constitution ensured that class equality remains outside the purview of the constitution. Instead, in principle, we are all supposedly equal before law. What does it mean to be equal before law? How is an illiterate man from the slums equal to the owner of an apartment complex?

Reservations, which are largely based on social parameters, are no guarantee that we are heading towards an equal society. On the contrary, reservations create a section within oppressed groups who are only too happy to do the job of suppressing their own people in order to strengthen the arms of a repressive state. This is apart from the social envy that is created dividing people along the lines of caste and religion. Economic equality is not merely about preserving the constitution. The constitution has to be rewritten in local dialects in a way that the poor understand what is at stake for them. It cannot be too long either because the poor must be able to both read and interpret it. The current Indian constitution written in 17th century English prose, which, with my PhD in English from an American university I cannot sometimes figure out, is not really the recipe for an egalitarian society. Constitutionality in essence must be about economic equality. Thats how we empower the poor: with information that helps them fight injustice through knowledge. Ignorance never helped anyone! Never!, protests the young Marx in Raoul Pecks beautifully made historical drama film, The Young Karl Marx (2017). To condemn people to live in ignorance of a law that they are subjected to on a daily basis is sinful to say the least.

The absence of economic equality creates a form of subservience among the masses who are ready to support a status quo led by a strong leader who is forceful and assertive, in short, a dictator. What we are witnessing in India is the politics of brute power a police state. From the Nehruvian mixed economy-based state in the 1950s which favored the rich industrialists and land owners, we evolved to a state corporatized to the extent where elections seem more like a charade than anything else. What does the political party at the helm of affairs have to do? Use the instruments of state power, especially the executive and the judiciary, to harass people who are critical of the government. The state does not need an ideology any longer because it doesnt need to connect to reality. What it needs is how best it can disinform the masses.

As Cheyfitz puts it:

Whereas ideology, however imaginary, retains a certain relation to reality, Disinformation severs that relation, precisely because it is constructed outside the realm of referential speech. It is, in fact, a species of hallucination. It is this airless invisible dome of Disinformation that currently marks the limits of the United States. Outside the dome reality is happening in various forms of production and destruction. Hallucinations of course produce shock waves in reality, fields of deadly force at home and abroad. The question remains: when will reality shatter the dome and what form will it take? (45)

People need to be injected with hallucinations on a daily basis. Disinformation drugs them with a false sense of reality. Indias limits as a nation-state are the limits of the corporate imagination. The limits to our thinking are prescribed by the corporate-based imagination. We dont have to think about others. We only have to think of ourselves. We have to blindly obey without asking questions. This is the time-honored recipe for a fascism rooted in disinformation: Repress people physically and emotionally, incite them to hate others who are perceived as weaker than them. Indoctrinate the majority on a daily basis that those others are responsible for all our problems and that without those others, we would be living in a golden era. In this era of disinformation, the most successful since Indias independence, the political party heading the government is using every means available in a majoritarian democracy to crush opposition of any kind.

The amorality of the average Indian is the amorality of Indias politics and society. One party the BJP projects itself as the savior of the majority community; another the INC projects itself as the savior of lower castes and minorities. Both do nothing to uplift the poor within the groups that they claim to represent. Instead they indulge in the language of disinformation by engaging with the masses in discussions about virtually nothing that matters; by making sure that there is no discussion of anything related to redistributive justice. What can be better for the ruling classes than a nation-state where the masses are disinformed enough to be speaking about everything except income inequality!

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The Disinformation Age: The Collapse Of Liberal Democracy In The United States Book Review - Eurasia Review

A troubling trend is emerging in the nations most conservative federal appeals court. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is rehearing pro-democracy decisions at an alarming rate and is doing so at the request of Republicans who are strident in their anti-voting philosophies.

The 5th Circuit is no stranger to criticism as the foremost conservative and oftentimes most outlandish court. These critiques are often warranted as the Trump-appointee stacked court is consistently taking actions that even the ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court has to correct. From endorsing draconian abortion policies to the perturbing writings of one of the courts most prominent Trump appointees, the 5th Circuit gives court watchers a plethora of reasons to be concerned, but one rapidly emerging trend is the rate at which this southern-based court is rehearing democracy-related cases with its full 17-judge panel.

When a case is appealed up to the 5th Circuit, it is heard by a three-judge panel chosen from the circuits 17 judges which issues an opinion on the appeal. However, per the circuits rules, cases may be reheard by the entire court, or en banc, if a majority of the circuits judges agree to rehear the case. This can happen in two ways: a party in the case can ask the entire court to rehear the case and the entire court will take a poll on if the case will be reheard or the court can decide to do so sua sponte (of its own volition) and poll of all the judges to determine if the case will be reheard. Once a case is reheard, the entire court will decide whether or not to uphold the three-judge panels previous ruling.

Republican officials have now made a habit of asking the court to rehear decisions they do not like. They have done so in every state covered by the circuit: Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Last year, the court agreed to rehear a decision that would have restored voting rights to tens of thousands of Mississippi voters, including a disproportionate amount of Black voters. In May, the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to rehear two critical redistricting cases one out of Louisiana and one out of Texas en banc.

To make bleak matters worse, when the 5th Circuit decides to rehear these cases, the rules of the 5th Circuit are such that the underlying decision is voided. This has meant that decisions that brought voters fair maps and re-enfranchised thousands were quickly retracted and as a result, voters pay the price.

During its 2021-2022 term, the 5th Circuit granted only four out of 203 or 2% of petitions for rehearing en banc. Only one petition from the 2021-2022 term pertained to voting rights and it was in a case where the entire 5th Circuit upheld Mississippis felony disenfranchisement scheme in Harness v. Watson. Rehearing increased the following term when the court granted nine out of 238 or almost 4% of requests. However, none of these cases that were reheard were democracy or voting rights related.

This judicial term, the court has already reheard one voting rights case and is scheduled to rehear two additional redistricting cases three times more voting rights cases than the prior two terms.

The drastic increase in the number of democracy related cases the court will rehear this term alone is staggering when contrasted to previous years. Given that each of these cases stand to drastically impact how and if minority voters are represented at both the state and local level, the stakes are extremely high.

In a sweeping 2-1 decision, the 5th Circuit struck down Mississippis lifetime ban on voting rights for those convicted of certain felonies, holding that is a form of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment. This decision was a bastion of hope for what courts can be: a mechanism to correct for a multigenerational wrong.

Then, Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch asked the entire 5th Circuit to rehear the case, arguing that the panels decision will inflict profound damage and sow widespread confusion if allowed to stand. A mere 55 days after a decision that could have reshaped the law to be more just and humane the state and possibly the Circuit for good, the 5th Circuit granted rehearing en banc, voiding the panels decision and reinstating Mississippis Jim Crow-Era felony disenfranchisement scheme. This also meant that the tens of thousands of Mississippians that could have been re-enfranchised leading up to the 2023 gubernatorial election were no longer able to have their rights restored.

Earlier this year, the 5th Circuit reheard the case. Now, tens of thousands of citizens voting rights hang in the balance of the nations most conservative court.

Last October, a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down the districts for Galveston County, Texas commissioners court the countys primary governing body for diluting Black and Latino voting power in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). However, Republican defendants appealed to the 5th Circuit and advanced the regressive legal argument that minority-coalition districts are not protected by the Voting Rights Act.

Then, in an exceedingly rare move, the 5th Circuit affirmed that the map should be struck down while inviting the entire court to reconsider the decision. While the panel agreed that the commissioners court map violates the VRA, it asked for rehearing of the courts own precedent, writing that the members of this panel agree that this courts precedent permitting aggregation should be overturned.

In its own order, the court laid out the groundwork for the nations most conservative judges to overturn precedent that could have been used to right what a previous court called a stark and jarring violation of the Voting Rights Act.

The entire 5th Circuit will rehear the case the week of May 13. If the court overturns its own minority-coalition district precedent, the VRA will be stripped of yet another key protection and Black and Latino voters in Galveston will be without recourse for a map the court itself admitted was properly decided at the district court level.

At the end of January, the nations most conservative circuit court voided a decision that protected fair state Supreme Court representation for Black voters in Louisiana when it decided to rehear a case challenging the states Supreme Court districts.

A consent decree is currently in place to ensure Black voters are represented on the states Supreme Court and ultimately led to Louisianas first Black Supreme Court justice.

Today, the Supreme Courts seven justices are elected through partisan elections for ten-year terms to represent specific districts. Black voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in District 7, which covers Orleans Parish.

In 2021, Republican attorney general, Jeff Landry, asked the district court that facilitated the 1992 consent decree to dissolve it, but the district court declined to take such a drastic measure after finding that the agreement was still necessary to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

In October 2023, three judges on the 5th Circuit also affirmed this decision, agreeing with the lower court that the consent decree is still very much necessary for Voting Rights Act compliance as the State provided no evidence, plans, or assurances of compliance with Section 2 of the VRA in the event that the Consent Judgment is terminated.

Landry asked the entire 5th Circuit to rehear the case and dissolve the agreement. Again, in a rare move, the 5th Circuit agreed to rehear the case en banc and voided a key pro-democracy decision.

If the 5th Circuit decides to dissolve the consent decree in its rehearing, Black voters in Louisiana will be harmed as representation on the Supreme Court will be threatened. If the 5th Circuit were to rule in favor of Republican officials, it could be yet another critical blow to the Voting Rights Act. Oral argument before the entire 5th Circuit will also take place the week of May 13.

While there is nothing inherently malicious about a court using its procedures, the alarming rate of rehearings of pro-democracy decisions (three this year alone), show that this court is using its procedure to harm voters. Democracy Docket previously sounded the alarm on Republicans exploiting the circuits procedure in these cases, the 5th Circuit appears to be taking Republican officials up on their offers and seems willing to rehear decisions that are not favorable for Republicans.

At the heart of each of these cases, citizens are fighting to have their voices heard. Unfortunately, this new trend reveals that when the court issues decisions that are good for voters, the courts most conservative forces are doing everything they can to erase any progress.

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The 5th Circuit Is Rehearing Voting Decisions at an Alarming Rate - Democracy Docket

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn during a meeting in the Oval Office on May 13, 2019, in Washington, D.C. Mark Wilson/Getty Images Gbor Scheiring, Harvard University

Hungarian leader and strongman Viktor Orbn, who presided over the radical decline of democracy in his country, is scheduled to meet with former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort on March 8, 2024.

Orbn has been Hungarys prime minister since 2010. Under his leadership, the country became the first nondemocracy in the European Union an illiberal state, as Orbn proudly declared. Trump expressed his admiration for Orbn and his authoritarian moves during their meeting at the White House in 2019.

Youre respected all over Europe. Probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but thats OK, Trump said. Youve done a good job and youve kept your country safe.

Ive followed their mutual romance with illiberalism for a long time. Although I am now in the U.S. as an academic, I was elected to the Hungarian Parliament in 2010 when Orbns rule started.

As the U.S. braces for a potential second Trump presidency, Americans may rightly wonder: Would Trumps America mirror Orbns Hungary in its slide toward authoritarianism?

I can still feel the pleasant spring breeze on my skin as I walked up the National Assemblys stairs in my freshly bought suit. As newly elected members of Parliament, my Green Party colleagues and I stepped into our roles with high hopes and detailed plans to fix Hungarys ailing economy and move toward sustainability.

I also remember the cold winter day a year and half later when we chained ourselves to the parliament building. It was a demonstration against the hollowing of parliamentary work and democratic backsliding under Orbns rule.

If the parliament is the political home of democracy, Hungarys was vacant by 2012.

Orbn and his party in power hijacked democratic institutions. The nationwide right-wing media network is a crucial component of this authoritarian power. As the Voice of America reported in 2022, Orbns allies have created a pervasive conservative media ecosystem that dominates the airwaves and generally echoes the positions of the Orbn government.

His government gerrymandered local districts and allowed voters to register outside their home districts, both aimed at favoring Orbn and his party. The government also staffed the public prosecutors office with loyalists, ensuring that any misconduct by those in power stays hidden.

Republicans in the U.S. have followed a similar trajectory with their support of Trump as his rhetoric grows more authoritarian. Trump says if he wins the election, he wants to be a dictator for one day. A recent poll shows that 74% of Republicans surveyed said it would be a good idea for Trump to be a dictator only on the first day of his second term.

Orbn has spent years undermining the independence of Hungarys judiciary, ensuring its rulings are friendly to his government and allies. While still an independent institution, the U.S. Supreme Court with three Trump-nominated justices has become a pillar of Trumpism, handing down rulings overturning the constitutional right to abortion and limiting civil rights.

Fox, OANN, and other right-wing media ensure that large parts of America see the world through a Trumpian lens.

Authoritarian populists tilt the democratic playing field to favor themselves and their personal and political interests. Subverting democracy from the inside without violent repression allows leaders like Orbn and Trump to pretend they are democratic. This authoritarianism from within creates chokepoints, where the opposition isnt crushed, but it has a hard time breathing.

How can strongmen get away with these antidemocratic politics? If there is one lesson from Hungary, it is this: Democracy is not sustainable in a divided society where many are left behind economically.

The real power of authoritarian populists like Trump and Orban lies not in the institutions they hijack but in the novel electoral support coalition they create.

They bring together two types of supporters. Some hardcore, authoritarian-right voters are motivated by bigotry and hatred rooted in their fear of globalizations cultural threats. However, the most successful right-wing populist forces integrate an outer layer of primarily working-class voters hurt by globalizations economic threats.

Throughout the 20th century, Democrats in the U.S. and left-of-center parties in Europe provided a political home for those fearing economic insecurity. This fostered a political system that engendered equality and a healthy social fabric, giving people reason to care for liberal democratic institutions.

However, when the economy fails to deliver, disillusionment with capitalism morphs into an apathy toward liberal democracy.

If the liberal center appears uncaring, authoritarian populists can mobilize voters against both the cultural and economic threats posed by globalization.

In Hungary, the first signs of authoritarianism appeared in economically left-behind rural areas and provincial small and medium towns well before Orbns 2010 victory. While these provincial towns suffered from increasing mortality, deindustrialization and income loss, the parties of the liberal center continued to sing hymns about the benefits of globalization, detached from the everyday experience of economic insecurity.

As I showed in my book, neglecting this suffering was the democratic centers politically lethal failure.

By today, Hungarys liberal and left-of-center parties have retreated to the biggest cities, leaving their former provincial political strongholds up for grabs for the radical right. The same is taking place in the U.S., with the Republicans becoming a party of the working class and nonmetropolitan America.

The success of authoritarian populism in Hungary might seem disheartening. However, there is a silver lining: Those committed to democracy in the U.S. still have time to learn from Hungarys mistakes.

Gbor Scheiring, Fellow, Harvard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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I watched Hungary's democracy dissolve into authoritarianism as a member of parliament and I see troubling ... - PennLive